customer relationship management

The Importance of the Eyes in Non-Verbal Communication with Customers

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The Importance of the Eyes in Non Verbal Communication with Customers

The Importance of the Eyes in Non-Verbal Communication with Customers

The manner in which you communicate nonverbally with your customers is crucial in their perception of the quality of service that they received. It is also a major component of relationship-building and whether or not they are satisfied. Various research studies have shown that nonverbal components of the communication process (i.e. posture, gestures, vocal quality, and eye contact) often override the verbal messages that you send.

Eye contact, in particular, is important when interacting with others. An old adage explains why this might be true – “The eyes are the window to the soul.” In effect, people often interpret the emotional meaning behind your spoken words by looking into your eyes. That is why you must be conscious of your eye contact and the messages you are potentially sending with them. For example, if you have tentative eye contact (e.g. looking around and failing to look a customer in the eye without staring) while speaking to a customer, some people may interpret that to mean you are insincere or not committed to your message or that you are untrustworthy. Through your eyes, you can show that you are interested in a person and what they have to say. On the other hand, you can demonstrate that you are dissatisfied, frustrated, or even angry about something they said.

The bottom line is that the eyes can be a powerful tool in bonding with customers and can help send positive messages that might potentially help meet their needs, wants and expectations and lead to positive word-of-mouth advertising for you and your organization. To be more effective at what you do as a customer service representative, spend time honing your non-verbal customer service skills.

For more information on how the eyes and other nonverbal cues can help build stronger customer-provider relationships, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

About Robert C. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills. Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Interpersonal Communication Skills Quote – Robert W. Lucas

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Interpersonal Communication Skills Quote – Robert W. Lucas

Excellent customer service skills are crucial if you want to deliver the best possible service to your internal and external customers. By practicing positive interpersonal skills such as verbal and nonverbal communication, eye contact, gesturing, body language, and listening skills, you can effectively send and receive messages to all types of customers.

As customer service author and performance consultant Robert W. Lucas is quoted as saying:

Interpersonal Communication Skills Quote - Robert W. Lucas

To gain insights into more effectively communicating with customers verbally and nonverbally, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

Non-verbal Communication With Customers

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Nonverbal Communication With Customers

Non-verbal Communication With Customers

To be successful in the service profession, you must be aware that nonverbal communication is occurring between you and your customer(s). These unspoken messages to others make it impossible for you to not communicate. That is because no matter how you position your body and use your facial expressions or body extremities, you are constantly being evaluated by your customers. Body language, eye contact, and other nonverbal cues aid or detract from communication.

Through awareness of potential nonverbal messages that you might be sending and the fact that people interpret them based on their own backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences, you can increase your effectiveness in customer encounters or anywhere you come into contact with another person. A significant fact to remember is that, according to a classic research study by Dr. Albert Mehrabian on how feelings are transmitted between two people during communication, nonverbal signals can contradict or override verbal messages.  This is especially true when emotions are high.

For more insights on nonverbal communication in a customer service environment and how to more effectively harness the power of communicating without speaking, check out copies of Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures.

About Robert C. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills. Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Nonverbal Communication Success Tip

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Nonverbal Communication Success Tip

Nonverbal Communication Success Tip

Whether you are dealing with customers or potential customers, never forget that the way that you communicate verbally and nonverbally (interpersonal communication skills) will determine the outcome of your interactions. In particular, nonverbal cues can often override your spoken words.

Personality types, cultural and educational background, the environment in which people have been reared, and many other factors affect the manner in which nonverbal cues are sent and received. All of these and more can create communication barriers since nonverbal cues carry powerful messages, you should remember that there is considerable room for misinterpretation of the cues used by different people.  The skills of recognizing, assigning meaning, and responding appropriately to nonverbal messages are not exact. That is because human behavior is too unpredictable and the interpretation of nonverbal cues is too subjective for accuracy of interpretation to occur with consistency.

To prevent possible communication and relationship breakdowns, take the time to study ways in which nonverbal cues are sent and received in various cultures and by different categories of customers people based on age, gender, personality style, abilities, and other factors. Use what you learn to measure your own patterns of nonverbal communication and send messages wit others accordingly.

For customer service tips, ideas and strategies on communicating with different types of customers in your own workplace, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success, Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures, and How To Be a Great Call Center Representative.

Inspirational Customer Service Quote – Mother Teresa

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Inspirational Customer Service Quote – Mother Teresa

One of the easiest and least expensive ways to start building brand and customer loyalty is to train yourself and others in the workplace to send customer-centric messages to everyone with whom you come into contact.

A quote from Mother Teresa sums up this concept.

Inspirational Customer Service Quote - Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa has Many Famous Quotes, here are a few more!

  1. Peace begins with a smile.
  2. There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.
  3. If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
  4. Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
  5. If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
  6. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
  7. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.
  8. Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
  9. Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.
  10. If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

About Robert C. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills.

Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Bob Lucas B.S., M.A., M.A, CPLP is the principal in Robert W. Lucas Enterprises, Inc and an internationally-known author; learning and performance professionals. He has written and contributed to numerous books on the subject of customer service skill training.

He regularly conducts workshops on creative training, train-the-trainer, customer service, interpersonal communication, and management,
and supervisory skills.

Learn more about Bob and his organization at www.robertwlucas.com and follow his blogs at www.robertwlucas.com/wordpress,
www.customerserviceskillsbook.com, and www.thecreativetrainer.com. Like Bob at www.facebook.com/robertwlucasenterprises

 

Communicating Effectively with Customers Who Have Disabilities

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Communicating Effectively with Customers Who Have Disabilities

Communicating Effectively with

Customers Who Have Disabilities

When the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in the United States, the number of people with disabilities was estimated to be over 43 million. Since then the number of aging societal members has swelled that number to more than 56 million people – over 19% of the population. The impact of those numbers is that more of your customers today and into the future have to deal with sight, hearing, speech and mobility impairments than ever before. These disabilities can create challenges in customer service, communication, and the workplace overall for you and other customer service representatives.

By educating yourself on the needs of people with impairments that reduce ability in the area of seeing, hearing or speaking can aid communication and help build stronger customer management and relationship skills. Through interpersonal communication skills, you are able to potentially improve customer and brand loyalty by enhancing overall customer satisfaction levels.

There are hundreds of pieces of literature and research in these areas available. Plus, each governmental jurisdiction has a multitude of agencies, nonprofit and advocacy groups that provide information. Start by a sound Internet search to identify resources.

For proven customer service ideas and strategies get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success, Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures, and How to Be a Great Call Center Representative. Each of these resources provides sound practices for improving communication and relationship management skills.

Who is Robert C. Lucas?

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills.

Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Bob Lucas B.S., M.A., M.A, CPLP is the principal in Robert W. Lucas Enterprises, Inc and an internationally-known author; learning and performance professionals. He has written and contributed to numerous books on the subject of customer service skill training.

He regularly conducts workshops on creative training, train-the-trainer, customer service, interpersonal communication, and management,
and supervisory skills.

Learn more about Bob and his organization at www.robertwlucas.com and follow his blogs at www.robertwlucas.com/wordpress,
www.customerserviceskillsbook.com, and www.thecreativetrainer.com. Like Bob at www.facebook.com/robertwlucasenterprises

The Impact of Customer Expectations on Customer Service

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The Impact of Customer Expectations on Customer Service

The Impact of Customer Expectations

on Customer Service

Customers come to you and your organization expecting that certain things will occur in regard to the products and services they desire. If you and other customer service representatives or employees fail to deliver them, your customers can easily desert to a brick and mortar or online competitor.

If you pay attention to your customers and strive for excellent customer service, you increase the chance that customer and brand loyalty will more likely result.

Typical customer expectations include one or more of the following things when they patronize an organization:

Expectations Related to People

  • Friendly, knowledgeable service providers.
  • Respect (to be treated like they are intelligent).
  • Empathy (to have feelings and emotions be recognized).
  • Courtesy (to be recognized as “the customer” and as someone who is important to you and your organization).
  • Equity (not to feel that one individual or group gets preferential benefits or treatment over another).

 Expectations Related to Products and Services

  • Ease of accessibility.
  • Availability of products and services (no lengthy delays).
  • Reasonable and competitive pricing.
  • Products and services that adequately address needs.
  • Quality (appropriate value for money and time invested).
  • Ease of use.
  • Safety (warranty available and product free of defects that might cause physical injury)
  • State-of-the-art products and service delivery.
  • Easy-to-understand instructions (and follow-up assistance availability).
  • Ease of return or exchange (flexible policies that provide alternatives depending on the situation).
  • Appropriate and expedient problem resolution.
  • Restitution for the inconvenience, damage or loss.

For proven strategies for meeting customer needs, wants and expectations and for creating a customer-centric organization, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success, Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and How to Be a Great Call Center Representative.

About Robert C. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills.

Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Bob Lucas B.S., M.A., M.A, CPLP is the principal in Robert W. Lucas Enterprises, Inc and an internationally-known author; learning and performance professionals. He has written and contributed to numerous books on the subject of customer service skill training.

He regularly conducts workshops on creative training, train-the-trainer, customer service, interpersonal communication, and management,
and supervisory skills.

Learn more about Bob and his organization at www.robertwlucas.com and follow his blogs at www.robertwlucas.com/wordpress,
www.customerserviceskillsbook.com, and www.thecreativetrainer.com. Like Bob at www.facebook.com/robertwlucasenterprises

Customer Service Quote – Michael LeBoeuf

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Customer Service Quote – Michael LeBoeuf

Customer Service Quote - Michael LeBoeuf

Organizations and customer service representatives that go out of their way to identify customer needs, wants and expectations, have a better chance of increasing brand and customer loyalty than competitors who do not.

By working hard to create a customer-centric organization, businesses increase the likelihood that customers will return and tell others about their positive service experiences.

For proven customer service ideas and strategies for building a strong service culture and delivering stellar customer service in your organization, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success, Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures and How to Be a Great Call Center Representative.

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills. Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Make Money Writing Books: Proven Profit Making Strategies for Authors by Robert W. Lucas at Amazon.com.

The key to successfully making money as an author and/or self-publisher is to brand yourself and your company and to make yourself and your book(s) a household name. Part of this is face-to-face interaction with people at trade shows, library events, book readings, book store signings, blogging or guest blogging on a topic related to their book(s). Another strategy involves writing articles and other materials that show up online and are found when people search for a given topic related to a topic about which the author has written.

If you need help building an author platform, branding yourself and your book(s) or generating recognition for what you do, Make Money Writing Books will help. Bob’s popular book addresses a multitude of ideas and strategies that you can use to help sell more books and create residual and passive income streams. The tips outlined in the book are focused to help authors but apply to virtually any professional trying to increase personal and product recognition and visibility.

In my book Customer Service Skills for Success, I define customer service as “the ability of knowledgeable, capable, and enthusiastic employees to deliver products and services to their internal and external customers in a manner that satisfies identified and unidentified needs and ultimately results in positive word-of-mouth publicity and return business.”

Here are a few more quotes from Michael LaBoeuf…

  1. A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.
  2. The world is your mirror and your mind is a magnet. What you perceive in this world is largely a reflection of your own attitudes and beliefs. Life will give you what you attract with your thoughts think, act and talk negatively and your world will be negative. Think and act and talk with enthusiasm and you will attract positive results.
  3. Every company’s greatest assets are its customers because without customers there is no company.
  4. The greatest management principle in the world is: ‘the things that get rewarded and appreciated get done.’
  5. All of us live at the feeling level, and our feelings are in large part a result of the way we perceive things. You observe or are told something, you interpret it, and only then do you have a reaction at the feeling level. The point is that feeling is preceded by perception, and all of us are capable of controlling our interpretation [the associations and assumptions] of what we see. If we can control our interpretation, then it logically follows that we can exercise some control over our feelings as well.
  6. The most important key to successful investing can be summed up in just two words-asset allocations.
  7. When you write down your ideas you automatically focus your full attention on them. Few if any of us can write one thought and think another at the same time. Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools.
  8. Too many start-up business fail simply because their owners continue to think and act like employees.
  9. The ultimate goal of a more effective and efficient life is to provide you with enough time to enjoy some of it.
  10. It’s important for you to understand that stock and bonds go up-and they go down. You need to be comfortable with that fact.
  11. As for worrying about what other people might think – forget it. They aren’t concerned about yours. They’re too busy worrying about what you and other people think of theirs.
  12. We talk about saving time and killing time when actually we can’t do either. We have no choice but to spend it at a constant and flowing rate.
  13. The things that get rewarded, get done
  14. Knowing nothing about investing might be a benefit. You won’t have to unlearn many popular beliefs propagated by Wall Street and the media that aren’t true.
  15. Index investing is an investment strategy that Walter Mitty would love. It takes very little investment knowledge, no skill, practically no time or effort-and outperforms about 80 percent of all investors.
  16. Adversity is an experience, not a final act.

Happy Waitress Even Happier After Receiving Astounding Tip

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Happy Waitress Even Happier After Receiving Astounding Tip

Happy Waitress Even Happier

After Receiving Astounding Tip

Many servers in the restaurant and hospitality industries and well, as customer service professionals in general, are underpaid and often overworked. This is unfortunate because, like many customer service representatives who work for minimum wage or less, they often do not make enough to pay for basic essentials.

It is for that reason that a recent story by Lauren Tuck of the Shine Staff put the spotlight on why it is important to provide superior customer service, and on customers who appreciate great service and are willing to open their hearts and bank accounts to help out deserving employees. Tuck’s blog article highlights how the generosity of one customer was touched by a deserving server’s financial plight and took action to make her life better.

The example highlighted in the article also serves as a great example for others in the service industry who may go to work disgruntled and as a result deliver marginal or sub-standard service to their customers. Quite simply by following basic rules of positive service, they can make a customer service experience one that is not only appreciated but also rewarded generously.

For ideas and techniques that can be used to develop excellent customer service skills and deliver superior customer service, get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Designing Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures. 

About Robert C. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills.

Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Bob Lucas B.S., M.A., M.A, CPLP is the principal in Robert W. Lucas Enterprises, Inc and an internationally-known author; learning and performance professionals. He has written and contributed to numerous books on the subject of customer service skill training.

He regularly conducts workshops on creative training, train-the-trainer, customer service, interpersonal communication, and management,
and supervisory skills.

Learn more about Bob and his organization at www.robertwlucas.com and follow his blogs at www.robertwlucas.com/wordpress,
www.customerserviceskillsbook.com, and www.thecreativetrainer.com. Like Bob at www.facebook.com/robertwlucasenterprises

Customer Service Excellence Quote – Sam Walton

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Customer Service Excellence Quote – Sam Walton

Quality customer service, customer service excellence, stellar customer service, excellent customer service, or whatever you call it in your organization, can lead to enhanced customer satisfaction levels. It can also help increase brand and customer loyalty and revenue as customers react to and tell others about their positive service experiences.

By focusing on your customers and addressing their needs, wants and expectations, you and others in your organization can help guarantee that customers will continue to come back again and again.

As Sam Walton, founder of Walmart is quoted as saying:

Customer Service Excellence Quote - Sam Walton offered by your customer service guru Robert C. Lucas
Customer Service Excellence Quote – Sam Walton

For information, ideas and strategies on how to deliver excellent customer service get copies of Customer Service Skills for Success and Please Every Customer: Delivering Stellar Customer Service Across Cultures. 

Here are a few more quotes from Sam Walton, Walmart’s Founder…

  • “We couldn’t care less about what is forecast or what the market says we ought to do. If we listened very seriously to that sort of stuff, we never would have gone into small-town discounting in the first place.” Sam Walton
  • “When somebody made a mistake – whether it was myself or anybody else – we talked about it, admitted it, tried to figure out how to correct it, and then moved on to the next day’s work.” Sam Walton
  • “You can make a positive out of the most negative if you work at it hard enough.” Sam Walton
  • “I learned a long time ago that exercising your ego in public is definitely not the way to build an effective organization.” Sam Walton
  • “If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you—like a fever.” Sam Walton
  • “I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.” Sam Walton
  • “Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up.” Sam Walton
  • “One person seeking glory doesn’t accomplish very much.” Sam Walton
  • “High expectations are the key to everything.” Sam Walton
  • “I guess real merchants are like real fishermen: we have a special place in our memories for a few of the big ones.” Sam Walton
  • “Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity.” Sam Walton
  • “If you get one good idea, that’s one more than you went into the store with, and we must try to incorporate it into our company.” Sam Walton
  • “I’d hate to see any descendants of mine fall into the category of what I’d call ‘idle rich’ – a group I’ve never had much use for.” Sam Walton
  • “To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time.” Sam Walton
  • “It was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Sam Walton
  • “If you take someone who lacks the experience and the know-how but has the real desire and the willingness to work his tail off to get the job done, he’ll make up for what he lacks. And that proved true nine times out of ten.” Sam Walton
  • “Take the best out of everything and adapt it to your needs.” Sam Walton
  • “Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.” Sam Walton
  • “The truth is when those Butler Brothers folks turned down my discounting idea, I got a little angry, and maybe that helped me decide to swim upstream on my own.” Sam Walton
  • “Focus on something the customer wants, and then deliver it.” Sam Walton

About Robert C. Lucas

Bob Lucas has been a trainer, presenter, customer service expert, and adult educator for over four decades. He has written hundreds of articles on training, writing, self-publishing, and workplace learning skills and issues. He is also an award-winning author who has written thirty-seven books on topics such as, writing, relationships, customer service, brain-based learning, and creative training strategies, interpersonal communication, diversity, and supervisory skills. Additionally, he has contributed articles, chapters, and activities to eighteen compilation books. Bob retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1991 after twenty-two years of active and reserve service.

Make Money Writing Books: Proven Profit Making Strategies for Authors by Robert W. Lucas at Amazon.com.

The key to successfully making money as an author and/or self-publisher is to brand yourself and your company and to make yourself and your book(s) a household name. Part of this is face-to-face interaction with people at trade shows, library events, book readings, book store signings, blogging or guest blogging on a topic related to their book(s). Another strategy involves writing articles and other materials that show up online and are found when people search for a given topic related to a topic about which the author has written.

If you need help building an author platform, branding yourself and your book(s) or generating recognition for what you do, Make Money Writing Books will help. Bob’s popular book addresses a multitude of ideas and strategies that you can use to help sell more books and create residual and passive income streams. The tips outlined in the book are focused to help authors but apply to virtually any professional trying to increase personal and product recognition and visibility.

In my book Customer Service Skills for Success, I define customer service as “the ability of knowledgeable, capable, and enthusiastic employees to deliver products and services to their internal and external customers in a manner that satisfies identified and unidentified needs and ultimately results in positive word-of-mouth publicity and return business.”

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